by Ray Manzarek
We played the entire summer. And we played with some great bands: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, the Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, the Turtles, the Chambers Brothers, and even the number one band from Mexico, something called the Locos.
It was a time of magic and the gathering of the new tribe. The tribe of expanded consciousness. The Sunset Strip was where the nightly powwow was held. And the Whiskey-a-Go-Go was the sweat lodge. Each member brought his own peyote as needed and the vibrations through that summer were one of peace and love. And the tribe was expanding—long-haired young men and women in soft raiments were everywhere.
The soft parade has now begun,
Listen to the engines hum,
People out to have some fun,
A cobra on my left,
Leopard on my right.
It was becoming a movement. A spontaneous movement of young people and lovers. An eruption of denied forces, a release of suppressed emotions, the reemergence of the ancients of Gods. Of Dionysus and Aphrodite. Of Eros. Of Wakan Tanka, of Coyote the trickster. Of the Kachinas. And the spirits of our Indian ancestors, the indigenous peoples of North America, smiled at this new tribe of Native Americans. For it’s been said that those born on the soil of America are all Native Americans. And the Earth’s power sites are always there, all we have to do is feel them. All we have to do is draw the new medicine wheel; the new cross within the circle. For the primordial values do not change over time. The sacred truths are always there…waiting for us to remember them…and reapply them.
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been born yet, and are you alive?
Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages,
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests.
“The Doors are hot!” was being said. Word of the house band at the Whiskey spread through Los Angeles. And Jim—“the lead singer is the hottest of them all”—was acquiring a reputation as something unique, something new. A new creature unlike any singer that had ever been seen before on the Sunset Strip. His performances were becoming positively shamanic as he reinvented the gods before our very eyes. The entire band celebrated the ancient symbols of the forests as we immersed ourselves in the waters of our collective unconscious with a music that was at once primordial and future bound. The Doors had coalesced. We were there. The band could enter the energy at will. We were one. Jim and John, Ray and Robby.
And the two young guys, John and Robby, plugged in to a musical transcendence they had never known before. And they were hooked! They loved it. They loved the power of the music, the ego-boosting adulation of the crowd, the lights, the fantasy, the energy, the chicks. The sex! And they wanted more. More of everything. We all did.
And Jim himself was magnetic. What a great joy it was to play with him. He was driven, and his passion drove the band to new heights of fervor. John and Robby and I were right there with him, ecstatic. Carrying him, supporting him, sometimes even leading him. Sometimes taking him to places of which he had no precognition. Our musical inventions created new realms for him to enter, and he was always able to conjure elegant words and fiery emotions to match our tonal explorations. We were all there for each other. Driving and pushing each other into unknown territory. Into the new world that was founded upon the ancient world. The New Age. And it was happening every night at a sweaty little boîte on Sunset Boulevard called the Whiskey-a-Go-Go.
Jim was also acquiring a reputation as the reigning sex symbol of the Sunset Strip.
The men don’t know
But the little girls understand
—Willie Dixon
They loved him. He was so damned handsome, lean, sexy, and snaky that he was irresistible to women. And he was polite, well mannered, and an intellectual. What woman wouldn’t want that in a man? Isn’t that the perfect combination…sex and brains? That’s what I want in my significant other.
They stood at the front of the stage, devouring him with their eyes. The maenads—with their mod bangs and flat-pressed hair and Courreges boots and bell-bottom slacks and ribbed poor-boy tops—had found their Dionysus. And their offering to him, their god, was themselves. It was like something out of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Jim had opened the door marked “all women are yours,” and he was inundated. With their perfumed bodies and nubile flesh they were equally irresistible to him. And, as their god, he had the duty to service as many of his worshipers as humanly possible. And he tried mightily. Wouldn’t you? He was a very ardent lover. And very busy. He took his godlike position seriously. It was an obligation he did not shirk. But how he managed to balance Pam Courson and Ronnie Harran and Joan Wilson in and amongst all the maenads, I’ll never know.
We were having a great time. The summer was per the Doors’ master plan…and four long-haired rock and roll acidheads were in a state of near-perpetual euphoria. Hell, we were even getting paid. Union scale: $135 simoleons per week—per man! I could pay my own rent. Dorothy and I even got a phone! We were flush. And very happy.
And then Jim laid a bomb on me. (It’s always got to have its ups and downs, doesn’t it?)
Middle of July. Almost one year to the day that we first sat together on the beach in Venice and he sang those songs to me. A warm and balmy Southern California night. Scent of flowers, night-blooming jasmine in the air mixed with eucalyptus sweet camphor. Moon at three-quarters’ full and Leo astrological energy giving everything a little extra charge of excitement. A good night to be alive.
And after the first set Jim said to me, “Ray, I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. Let’s go outside, where we can be alone.”
“Sure, man,” I said. “You holding?”
He grinned. “Yeah, I got a little number.”
“Done deal,” I said, and we headed off into the alley behind the Whiskey and walked a block up the street.
We stopped under a big eucalyptus tree and the smell was intoxicating. Jim produced one of his perfectly rolled joints and we lit up. The sweet smoke invaded our lungs and worked its subtle way into our psyches, making them warm and secure.
“Now, what’s up?” I asked him.
He casually flipped the roach into the darkness and said, “We’ve got a problem.”
I thought he was kidding. “What, that was the last joint?”
“No, man. I’m serious.”
“We don’t have any problems. Everything’s jake.”
He hunkered down and rested his back against the enormous tree trunk. I joined him and we looked like two Okie farmers squatting in the dry earth of the 1930s dust bowl Depression.
“Not quite,” he said. “We’ve got a big problem.”
“Jim, what?!” I was incredulous.
He took a deep breath, looked at me, and said, “We’ve got to get rid of the drummer.”
My brain went into a panic.
“What?! Why? Don’t you like John’s drumming?”
“No, it’s not that…”
“He knows the tunes.” I wasn’t even listening to him. My brain and mouth were racing in disbelief. “He keeps a real solid beat. He knows jazz and shit. He’s good!”
“Ray, it’s not his playing…”
“Well, what then?”
“His drumming is fine…I just can’t stand him as a human being.”
The reverb unit in my head went on multiple feedback: Shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!
“We’ve got to fire him,” he said with finality.
“Now?!” was all I could say.
“As soon as we can find another guy.”
I rested my reverb unit against the tree. We hunkered in silence, the 1930s dust swirling around our feet. The soil baked and parched…like my brain. Then it was my turn for a deep breath….
“It’s too late, Jim. We’re stuck with him,” I said softly.
He looked at me, imploring me.
“It’s not! Come on, Ray,
we can get somebody else.”
“We’re on our way, man. This is the unit. The music’s too good to change it now. It would break the circle.”
“I don’t want to do that,” he wisely said. “I just want to get rid of him.” He looked into the soft, warm night and shook his head. “He gets under my skin, man. Rubs me the wrong way.”
I laughed in agreement. “Yeah, I know what you mean. He is abrasive, but what are we gonna do? He’s the card we were dealt.”
“Fuckin’ deuce of spades,” he sneered.
And then I remembered the revealing little incident that happened when I first introduced Jim to John. A minor incident, nothing really, but obviously filled with portent.
“Jim, this is the guy I was telling you about. The jazz drummer, John Densmore,” I said back then. Jim smiled, extended his hand, and looked into John’s eyes. John took Jim’s hand, said, “Hey, man,” and quickly turned his gaze away. He could not tolerate Jim’s penetrating stare. It was too much for him. He had to avert his eyes. Jim’s soul-searching shamanic look had penetrated the core of John Densmore’s psyche and John couldn’t be comfortable with that. Perhaps he was unsure of himself or perhaps, even, he had something to hide. Was I reading too much into it? Were my acid-infused eyes reading too many psychological revelations into a brief encounter? I thought so at the time, but not now. Jim knew it, too. And I don’t think Jim was pleased by what he saw. Even back then.
“Man, you’re the older,” I tried to reason with him. “You’re a college graduate, he’s not. You’re more mature and a lot wiser than he is. Think of him as your dumb kid brother. You’ve got to bring him along.”
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“Use your maturity to help him, Jim. Help him grow up.”
“Ray! I’m not grown up, for Christ’s sake.”
“More than he is.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Just try to overlook it when he pisses you off. You can do it, I know you can.”
“Sometimes I just want to strangle him.”
I laughed. “Come on, you can do it. You’re his big brother now!”
He hit me on the arm. “Fuck you, Manzarek. You’re always the goddamned peacemaker.”
“Someone’s got to be.” I grinned. “With you two hotheads.”
He rose up from his hunker and stretched his long snake limbs. “All right, all right…shit. But I’m not gonna like it, Ray.”
And, you know, he never did.
We continued playing the Whiskey. Jim didn’t talk about terminating John Densmore anymore, but he did continue his remarkable sexual balancing act. Although Pam seemed to be slowly winning out as his main squeeze, there was an overabundance of other female companionship. Actually, this was the pattern that continued throughout their entire relationship. Pam was number one but always at the head of a list of a continually revolving top ten. Maenads, you know, need their god. Spiritually and physically. Orgasms are required. Demanded, even. And our priapic snake man always tried to rise to the task. Even later, when Jimbo took control and alcohol made his flesh too weak to answer the demands of the multitude, his spirit of sexual adventure was always willing. But for now, filled with youthful potency, in the first flush of his Dionysian powers, Jim was a happy man. And the bacchantes were well serviced…and extremely satisfied. They must have been. They kept coming back.
And the music was growing in fascinating directions as we worked the magic on a nightly basis in front of a very receptive audience. A gathering of the tribe that urged us on, supported us, encouraged us in our explorations of the unknown zone.
There are things known and things unknown.
In between are the Doors.
As the vibrations intensified, the audience in that sweat lodge on Sunset became more delighted. They always wanted us to take them higher, to a new realm, to a psychic state they’d never experienced before. A new land of intensity and passion. The audience in that summer of 1966 was no different from an audience today. The thing we demand from our artists is passion. We crave intensity of experience. We are glutted with stimulation; we’re in a frenzy of consumption, a frenzy of choices, we’re in a crackhead meth-freak zone of “gimme.” We want it all! And we’ve got it all! They give us everything. The entertainment conglomerates and the consumer goods industries have supplied our every need. But we feel unfulfilled, vaguely unsatisfied. Something’s missing from our modern lives.
Something’s wrong, something’s not quite right.
And that something is what the powers that be, the Establishment, as we called them in the sixties, don’t ever want you to have. Passion and intensity. We want a passionate life lived in a state of ecstasy. A life of intensity and deep emotions. An existential life in which every moment counts. A real life.
But we’re not allowed to have that. Because if we did…we would be free. If we were given the passion and intensity we so desperately crave, we could open the doors of perception ourselves. We could step out of the closed circle of our psychic bondage and be free men and women on the planet. Beholden to no one and responsible for everything. And that is exactly what the Establishment doesn’t want you to have…freedom. For then we would gain wisdom and we wouldn’t put up with the crap that corporate America is feeding us. We wouldn’t buy their junk. Their junk products and their junk entertainments. It would be the end of civilization as we now know it. We would demand passion and intensity and art and a saving of the planet. We wouldn’t accept the meth-head bonehead frenzy we now live in. We would demand peace and love and beauty and truth. We could create the new Garden of Eden. We could become the new Adam and Eve and begin the world again. And that’s why the powers that be must stop the “counterculture.” It’s a battle of lifestyles. It’s the lovers versus the salesmen of junk. It’s the poets versus the manufacturers of crap. It’s the dancers versus the bringers of war. It’s the song makers, the earth tenders, the new gardeners of Eden versus the military/industrial complex. And beware, my friends, they are relentless.
Dead cats, dead rats, did you see what they were at?
Fat cat in a top hat,
Thinks he’s an aristocrat,
Thinks he can kill and slaughter!
Crap! Well, that’s crap!
They must be stopped or we are all the losers. The earth itself is at peril. Our mother is dying and we are going mad with choices of consumption. Stop it! Simplify!
And then we were fired from the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. Jim had pushed the envelope beyond the pale. We had entered the forbidden zone. We had become intolerable, anathema, a pariah to the management of the club. And all in one night!
Jim had spoken in public the forbidden phrase: “Father, I want to kill you. Mother…I want to fuck you.” So what? Oedipus Rex, right? He was doing his variation on Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King, which was very popular in the late fifties and early sixties in intellectual/psychological/artistic circles. He was giving voice in a rock and roll setting to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in Freudian psychology. He wasn’t saying he wanted to do that to his own mom and dad. He was reenacting a bit of Greek drama. He had been involved in the production of Oedipus Rex back at Florida State University, just as he had been involved with Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It was theater! It was all make-believe. (Or was it?)
But Phil Tanzini, co-owner of the Whiskey, along with Elmer Valentine and Mario Magliori, certainly didn’t think it was playacting. It was real to him and it was verboten! That night we had given an absolutely inspired performance of “The End,” a mesmerizing performance that had brought the collective audience to a state of near-suspended animation. The dancers had stopped serving drinks, even the go-go girls in their cages had stopped their shimmy-shake routines. There was stillness and a hushed suspension of time in the collective mind of the club. Only the hypnotic drone of the keyboard bass, the delicate cymbal punctuations of the drums, the low snake slides of the guitar, and the words of Jim Morris
on continued on in their relentless descent into madness. Into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Into the heart of darkness. For this was the night that Jim Morrison said, for the very first time…
The killer awoke before dawn,
He put his boots on…
John and Robby and I had never heard these words before. We were stunned and delighted. Jim was in a very esoteric reality that night, an LSD-enhanced, non-ordinary state of reality, and he was inspired. Whether he had preconceived these new words or was inventing them on the spot, I’ll never know…but we were with him. We were attuned to every nuance and we were ready for anything as we followed him into the unknown.
He took a face from the ancient gallery
That line was my clue. An ancient Greek drama mask.
And he walked on down the hallway
He took on a psychological mask and began to explore the corridors of his psyche. The audience was at a standstill, virtually hypnotized. Morrison was in a different place, a shamanic place, and we all watched him, entranced.
He went into the room where his sister lived
Then he paid a visit to his brother
And then he…walked on down the hallway.
Jim had a sister, Ann, and a brother, Andy. Now it was getting personal. He had gone from the Billy the Kid killer to an ancient Greek drama mask to his own brother and sister.
I was fascinated. I thought to myself, Where is he going with this? How’s he going to conclude this new, scary brilliance? He had constructed a labyrinth and the rules of drama demanded that he find a way out. And Jim was nothing if not a good dramatist. He would never leave us lost in a labyrinth of his own construct. He would resolve it, and the three of us were behind him, seeking to make music as hypnotic and compelling as his words.